State of the Garden: 2/18/13

The garden is still going pretty well. We had some pretty cold weather last night (I think we got down to around 37 degrees), but the plants seem to have survived just fine. My bean plants have the first flowers showing...

Including my Scarlet Runner bean plant...

I planted some radishes, and they are doing well. The front row were pre-germinated. The back row was planted as seeds. However they seem to be growing at an almost identical rate.

I had a Better Bush tomato ripening on the vine, and something ate it.

Today I found the critter had been back, and had now removed the rest of the tomato from the vine...

...and then started in on the other tomato that was ripening.

I noticed that it was able to determine which side of the tomato was ripe, and only eats on that side. So it reached into the tomato cage and at the ripe side of the tomato, ignoring the green side exposed to the outside of the cage.

So whatever is eating the tomatoes is able to get its head between the bars of the cage, which are probably only 2 inches apart. I had assumed that it was my resident opossum, which I believe is still around, since I can see from the new mulch that I laid down that something is still going under my shed.

I've watched my opossum go under there before, so I know that's his usual route under there. However I also know that he is a big boy, so it's surprising that he'd be able to get his head through the bars of that tomato cage. Of course, it's always possible it could be a rat or mouse. Who knows? I just hope it doesn't continue to be a problem. Especially since I have a yellow pear tomato plant with about a dozen tomatoes growing on it at all different stages of development.

My grapevine is hanging in there, but has something weird going on with it. It seems to be dying close to the ground, but the vining arms are doing fine.

The leaves near the base are turning brown and falling off...

...yet this vining tendril is bright green and healthy in appearance.

Weird. And I saw this guy on one of my bean plants. I don't know whether he's good or bad.

I've noticed that my bean plants have some drying and wrinkling of the leaves on some edges. I'm not sure what is causing it. I'm speculating it could be the warmer weather we've been having, as it seems I'm at the end of the growing season for beans and peas.

My jalapeno continues to grow. Part of me wishes my snacking critter would try snacking on this!

I have two tiny little bell peppers started...

And my passion flower vine continues to bloom like crazy, but no fruit have taken.

My strawberries are still going well. I have a dozen or more now, with the first two beginning to show a little ripening.

My mango tree is showing signs of something snacking on it as well. A lot of the leaves are looking eaten up.

But it has mangoes growing! The strange thing is that our warm weather seems to have caused a couple of blooming spurts. So while I have fruit growing up on top of my tree (where the tree bloomed about a month ago)...

I have fresh blooms coming in down below...

So there's a lot of activity going on in the garden. Now if I can just figure out what to do about the midnight snacker that's eating my tomatoes!

STATE OF THE GARDEN: 1/28/13

I continue to deal with the bougainvillea that have taken over my fence, and are pulling it over with their weight. Since I worked on the other one for a couple of weeks and got it down to a quarter of its previous size, I decided to start on the one over by the mango.

Only the half free of the mango is in bloom. The rest hidden under the mango looks dead, but most is very much alive.

This bougie is growing into the mango.

While working on it, I discovered a bird nest from last season.

I mostly filled my 65-gallon horticulture bin with bougie debris, and removed perhaps a quarter of the plant.

It's a start. After that I cleaned out the bed over by the shed where I planted the grapevine, and put down some mulch. I started with dirt and weeds, as well as the rubber vine that grew from behind the shed and rooted down into the bed uninvited...

And my poor pitiful crape myrtle, which was also being taken over by the rubber vine. (Note that I believe the crape myrtle goes dormant in winter, and therefore looks dead right now. Usually it gets leaves and flowers in spring. It only has a few leaves right now. However I don't know whether it should be this bare. So we'll see whether or not it "springs" back.)

You'll also notice that all around the crape myrtle is this weed that grows in a carpet...

It's amazing that as you go to grab a handful, you find it is growing by runners, and a whole strip will come up...

And before you know it, you discover something like this cement pad is growing beneath it...

When I was done, this is what the bed looked like.

And this was my pile of debris (I have to be careful to not cut down more than the garbage guys will pick up. Last time we did a large amount of work, we had to bribe the garbage guy with $20 and load the debris into the truck ourselves to avoid paying hundreds to the claw truck for pickup.)

I also came across leeches in/on my bag of mulch. It was the first time I've ever seen leeches, other than in horror movies. They are creepy!

Otherwise this is what is going on around the yard:

My bean and pea seedlings continue to grow, but I had this one little guy that was slow to make an appearance.

But once they appear, they sprout up so fast. This was the next morning...

My yellow cherry tomato is growing like gangbusters right now, and more flowers are coming in.

My jalapeno pepper is growing, and a few flowers, but the plant isn't growing that much yet.

Same with the Better Bush tomato. The plant hasn't really grown, hasn't really flowered, and the two tomatoes on it haven't shown any obvious increase in size. Yet the Brandywine tomatoes that I sprouted from seed are growing around the outside of the cage.

The passion vine is loaded with new blooms every day, and still smells like grape juice!

I had put columbine flower seeds in this decorative vase. I keep checking for some sign of it doing something.

Now the other day I spotted a couple sprigs of green popping up. Trouble is, I can't know that they are columbine flowers. They could be weeds! Only time will tell.

My grapevine is doing well so far.

It's beginning to twine around the trellis.

These pictures were taken before I laid down mulch, and I swear that the vine looks to be a deeper green today, after the mulch and a good watering. Or maybe it is just the contrast of seeing it against the dark mulch that makes it look darker.

I also have a prickly pear cactus that was stuck against the back fence behind the shed, and I noticed yesterday that it is flowering as well.

I've started collecting the pieces from my mahogany seeds, hearing that they make good mulch. So I figured I could use them as mulch in some of my potted plants.

I also had to do a round-up of lubber babies. The nymphs are making an early appearance this year, thanks to our warm winter.

This was my third batch removed from the yard. I've already removed a few dozen. Smaller batches than I usually have, but earlier in the year.

The whole time I worked in the yard, Zook waited patiently.

By the time I was ready to go inside, he was falling asleep.

Such a good boy!

So I am slowly making progress on the yard. I dread when they rains begin, as that will mean mowing the yard at least once a week, and I'll have quite a time trying to keep up with the mowing and the weeding and everything else that is needed. (Mowing in 95 degree temps is absolutely no fun!) Ugh!